AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate (legacy) — Question 601

A company wants to identify specific Amazon EC2 instances that are underutilized and the estimated cost savings for each instance.
How can this be done with MINIMAL effort?

Answer options

• A. Use AWS Budgets to report on low utilization of EC2 instances.
• B. Run an AWS Systems Manager script to check for low memory utilization of EC2 instances.
• C. Run Cost Explorer to look for low utilization of EC2 instances.
• D. Use Amazon CloudWatch metrics to identify EC2 instances with low utilization.

Correct answer: C

Explanation

AWS Cost Explorer includes a Resource Optimization feature that automatically identifies idle or underutilized Amazon EC2 instances and calculates the estimated monthly savings from resizing or terminating them. While Amazon CloudWatch and AWS Systems Manager can monitor performance metrics, they do not natively calculate estimated cost savings for each instance. AWS Budgets is used for setting custom budgets and alerts, not for detailing resource-level utilization and savings recommendations.